August is the Sunday of the Year

Trust me on this.

Right on cue. Last night, the evening of August 1st, I dreamed I lost my job, and was hired at another school but I had to teach first grade. I tried speaking to first graders as I would my fourth graders, and basically traumatized everyone involved. My students complained to me, to my coworkers, and to their parents. Plus I lost some of them. I woke up in a cold sweat. Hello, School Anxiety Dream! Boy, I didn’t miss you!

Many of you are probably familiar with the term, “Sunday Scaries.” It refers to that feeling you get when it is Sunday afternoon/evening, you realize the weekend is coming to an end, and the long workweek looms ahead of you. It can be harder to sleep on Sunday nights as our minds spin on all that awaits us on the morrow. My husband and I had our first fight on a Sunday afternoon, way back when we were dating, and it was only after talking it out that we realized we were both on edge because we didn’t want the weekend together to end. Even if you like your job, I’m going to go ahead and assume you like the weekend more.

You all know I like my job. Nay, love my job. Teaching brings me joy and purpose and satisfaction, and children are hilarious and delightful. Nevertheless, it is a difficult job, and by the end of the school year we teachers need rest. We need to repair our hearts and brains and bodies to prepare them for the next year. I’m not looking to get up on my soapbox about this — oh, you know I could! — but having three months off in the summer is not vacation, it is survival. The job is too intense to do year ‘round; we’d lose more teachers than we already are. Additionally, most of us are not given enough personal days during the school year to be able to take a trip, or simply have intentional family time. Our district gives us 3 personal days a year — to be used anytime we can’t be at school but we are not sick — and only 2 of those can be rolled to the next year. We are only allowed to accumulate 5. Basically, after a couple of years I could have enough to take a week’s vacation, but then I couldn’t go to a friend’s funeral or take my dog to an emergency vet appointment. My family tries to schedule all the things we want to do together in the summer months, even though it is an incredibly busy time for my husband at work and both of the kids have work and summer activities that they end up missing. Also, do you know that there are places that aren’t ideal for visiting in July?!

*steps off soapbox. Oops*

Anyway, we can all agree that teachers have 3 months off in the summer, right? Well, the school year generally wraps up the first week of June, and then there’s a teacher inservice day, but we have the other three weeks of June. Of course I participated in 4 days of workshops for the MN Department of Education, but that was a choice. I still had over two weeks in June totally free! July is also responsibility-free (I did another 4 days of workshops but that was my money-generating choice)!

Nobody tells you about August. When you train to be a teacher, they don’t talk about August. They don’t tell you that, like clockwork, your brain’s alarm clock goes off on August 1st. They don’t mention that the grade-level team group text will switch from vacay photos to “do we want this resource” inquiries. They don’t warn you that the school secretary will encounter a flood of texts and emails, ranging from “Sorry I forgot to put in my order but here it is can I still get it before school starts?” to “Are they done cleaning our hallway so I can spend a few hours in my classroom?” (I sent both of these. Amanda, you are a saint.) They certainly don’t mention that, even though the Teacher Inservice days are only scheduled for the last week of August (ope, down to 3 weeks!) your instincts will have you in your classroom at LEAST one week before that, because OMG I AM NOT READY. They certainly don’t mention The Dreams.

For your entertainment, I polled some of my educator friends about their anxiety dreams. Enjoy:

• “Adults were accusing me of cheating my way to the ‘top.’ I’m not sure what top means.”

• “Every year I’m in a strange school with strange people and I can’t find my classroom. When I do get into a classroom it’s always super big and spacious. I’m usually wearing minimal clothing, too.” (Please note: being wildly underdressed is an ongoing theme. Usually missing pants for me. The unconscious mind functions like a 13-year-old boy.)

• “Challenging students that I had in years past were again in my class — but, like, all of them, even though they are different ages.” (I would not be surprised if this one showed up in my unconscious one of these days now… thanks, Windy.)

• “I had been hired to paint someone's portrait. You need to understand that I can't draw, don't know how to stretch a canvas, have never painted anything more complicated than a wall - so this was way out of my wheelhouse.” (This woman is a doctor. She teaches medical grad students.)

• “One dream variant is my students swinging on lights in my classroom like monkeys and jumping off the walls. No matter what I did or said, I could not control them.” (This one is my 8th grade geometry teacher. She assures me that my class did not inspire this particular dream.)

• “As a retired teacher I still remember dreams of coming to school naked. I forgot to get dressed. Also oversleeping and being late for school.” (Here’s that underdressed thing again. Also, I have heard many variations on the late, lost, don’t-know-the-subject-I’m-teaching nightmare. Yikes!)

While these stories are laughable, they do point to an underlying aspect of the job of teaching: the job is high-stakes, and we take that feeling home with us. A brave teacher friend shared the following:

“I haven’t had any dreams about the start of the school year for about 5 years. That would be the year that I finally got some mental health help and went to therapy. Before that I had regular dreams about not being good enough and not being able to help students enough. I had a dream that my entire class died and it was my fault. Along with many other things in my life at the same time it spiraled my depression to suicidal thoughts. It was the dream along with the pushing of a friend that finally pushed me to get the mental health help I needed. Part of my therapy was realizing that I could only be present for students when they are with me. I had no control over the time they were away from me. So I needed to absolutely be present when I could. It changed my teaching. I used to say I teach math to students. Now I teach students many things, one of which is math.”

There are a lot of jokes and memes about Back to School impending doom. School supplies were back in Target in mid-July. Most of the people I encounter right now ask me, “Are you ready to go back?” No! I’m not. It doesn’t mean I don’t love my job, that I’m not totally excited for my new group of kids and the next year’s adventure. I simply want to stay in the present — denial? — for a couple more weeks.

But hey, if you see me in Target with no pants on, call my husband. He’ll know what to do.

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie